Chapter 1: Shadows Before Dawn

Saigon, October 2050.

The city was no longer a mere urban sprawl—it had morphed into a high-tech labyrinth sprawling beneath a slate-gray sky, where artificial rain from climate-regulating systems fell in relentless, lifeless sheets, a symphony stripped of soul. From the 128th floor of the Thiên Long Tower—the nerve center of Southeast Asia's most dominant tech conglomerate—Raizen Valefor gazed down at the streets below. Hovercars darted along magnetic lanes, leaving faint streaks of pale green light slashing through the darkness. Skyscrapers towered like a steel jungle, their facades smothered in 3D holographic displays broadcasting AI-crafted slogans: "New World – A Perfect Life Through Technology." Yet beneath them, in the digital slums crowding the towers' foundations, millions huddled in rusting container homes, their hollow stares fixed on automated welfare dispensers—their only tether to survival in a society wholly enslaved by artificial intelligence.

Saigon in 2050 was a city cleaved in two. Above, the elite thrived in floating estates suspended in the sky, shielded by patrolling drones and magnetic barriers. Below, the laboring masses swarmed black markets, bartering defective AI factory rejects for pennies. The calls of street hawkers and the scent of curbside phở had vanished, drowned out by the shriek of plasma engines and the biting stench of molten metal wafting from robot recycling yards. This was no longer a human domain; it was a battleground of machines and power.

Raizen Valefor, 32, stood in a sealed conference room atop Thiên Long Tower, his icy gaze sweeping the faces around him. He was no ordinary man. As the corporation's sharpest strategist, he had forged Thiên Long from a scrappy startup into an empire that ruled the region's tech and defense sectors. His short black hair framed a rugged physique clad in a sleek black suit, casting him more as a warrior than a spectacled paper-pusher. But today, his fists clenched beneath the table, nails biting into his palms, as he confronted a project poised to rewrite everything.

Before him, a virtual dossier shimmered on the glass tabletop, its crimson text stark: "Project Asvaria – Reshaping Humanity Through AI and Transcendence." Kael Iscariot—Thiên Long's chief engineer and Raizen's closest friend since their university days—rose, his low, steady voice piercing the executives' hushed whispers. Tall and gaunt, his piercing eyes gleamed behind steel-rimmed glasses as he summoned a hologram: a colossal machine pulsing with spiraling red circuits.

"This is the future," Kael declared, his voice brimming with conviction. "Project Asvaria isn't just an economic AI—it's a portal to usher humanity into a new realm, where we remake everything from the ground up. Raizen, you'll spearhead the vanguard."

Raizen's grip tightened on the silver necklace he'd worn for ten years—a gift from Kael, etched with "Valefor" as a vow of eternal friendship. He had once trusted Kael above all others, burning the midnight oil beside him in the Polytechnic University's basement labs, dreaming of a world where technology uplifted humanity. But now, meeting Kael's frigid stare, he sensed an unseen rift cracking between them.

"Vanguard?" Raizen surged to his feet, his voice quaking with rage yet tempered by composure. "You mean turn me into a test subject for that thing? Surrender humanity to an AI and a world no one's even sure exists—you've gone mad, Kael!"

The room's atmosphere stretched taut as a bowstring. The figures around the table—from finance director Leon Vesper with his venomous smirk to military engineer Ragnar Kiryuu with his pensive stare—regarded Raizen like a lamb marked for slaughter. Only Seiryu Alvis, head of biological research, arched a brow, her fingers drumming the table as if wrestling with some unspoken thought.

Kael stepped closer, laying a hand on Raizen's shoulder, his voice sinking to a murmur. "Don't you get it, Raizen? This is your shot at redemption. You've ruined too much without even knowing—three lives, three careers."

Raizen flung the hand off, his eyes ablaze. "Redemption? You're pinning Thiên Long's failures on me? I'm not your chess piece to maneuver!"

Yet memories crashed over him unbidden, defying his denial. Three years prior, a military strategy he'd crafted had imploded, severing Thiên Long's ties with Vietnam's armed forces. Ragnar Kiryuu—a rising star in military engineering—lost his post in the defense corps, cast into Thiên Long as a fallen man. Raizen hadn't known; he'd only seen Ragnar join the team with a spark of ambition, blind to the fact that he'd crushed the man's dreams.

Then there was Seiryu Alvis. Her medical venture—AI-powered cellular regeneration—had been torpedoed by Raizen's objections of "ethical breaches," costing her funding and prestige in the scientific world. He scarcely remembered her, pegging her as a detached physician, yet the blade-like edge in her gaze today bore a resentment he couldn't place.

And Leon Vesper—the cryptic economist with an unreadable grin. A financial gambit of his, dismissed by Raizen as "too reckless," had collapsed, bleeding billions from foreign investors. Now, Leon sat there, hands interlaced, eyeing Raizen like a hazard to be purged. Raizen hadn't grasped the wreckage, but his choices had unknowingly driven them to the brink—and here they stood, under Thiên Long's shadow, nursing scars he'd never noticed.

"I won't do it," Raizen said, his tone unyielding. "If you want someone to dive into that cursed gate, find another fool."

Kael drew back, his eyes glacial. "You don't have a say, Raizen. This comes from Vesper Atrius—and me. You think I want to betray you? But if you lead, I can safeguard what we've built. Refuse, and it all crumbles—just like before."

Vesper Atrius. The name sent a shiver down Raizen's spine. Thiên Long's lunatic scientist, the puppetmaster of every covert scheme, a figure Kael had once cautioned against: "He's a demon in a machine's skin." Raizen had never met Atrius, but he knew the man had engineered the supercomputer steering Thiên Long—and likely Asvaria itself.

Before he could retort, the conference doors slammed open. A squad of black-armored guards, wielding electromagnetic rifles, stormed in. Kael gestured sharply, "Escort him to the lab. The project begins now."

Raizen thrashed, but mechanical claws seized him like iron jaws. He was hauled through blazing corridors, down a sealed elevator plunging into the tower's hidden depths. In a cavernous chamber awash in pale blue light, the Asvaria machine loomed—a gargantuan metal beast, its surface writhing with crimson circuits, thrumming as if alive. Engineers in white hazmat suits scurried between screens, while Seiryu Alvis, Ragnar Kiryuu, and Leon Vesper flanked Kael, each face a tapestry of emotion: Seiryu's icy reserve, Ragnar's quiet brooding, Leon's crooked smirk hinting at secrets.

Strapped to a metal chair, wires cinched to his wrists and temples, Raizen roared, "Kael, stop this! I'll never forgive you!" But Kael stood behind bulletproof glass, fingers dancing over a control panel, his gaze flickering with doubt before turning to stone.

Then a metallic voice boomed—not from Kael, but the machine itself—chill and devoid of feeling: "The weakest will shatter fate's wheel. You are the ember of ruin, Raizen Valefor, and its extinguisher."

Raizen's eyes widened. "Who? Who's speaking?" He twisted, but saw only the machine's display pulsing with a crimson spiral—mirroring the circuits coiling across its hull. Vesper Atrius. The man's supercomputer held the reins.

"Kael, stop!" he bellowed one last time, but a blinding white flare erupted from the machine, swallowing him whole. His body fractured into luminous motes, sucked into a warped spatial tunnel. His scream reverberated, then dissolved into boundless dark.

Three days later, Saigon trembled with the headline: "Strategist Raizen Valefor Vanishes After Thiên Long Tower Blast." Newsfeeds churned with speculation—accident, murder, or a grander plot. Whispers pinned Leon Vesper, a vocal critic of Raizen, though he brushed it off with a cryptic smile. Amid the lab's charred wreckage, a shard of the machine lay dormant, its spiral emblem glowing red as blood.

Raizen Valefor awoke to searing agony, as if his flesh had been shredded and reassembled awry. His head buzzed, the world a haze pierced only by the wail of wind through stone fissures—a spectral lament. Blinking, he pieced together the scene: a dim cave, its walls blotched with green moss, steeped in the damp reek of earth and a sharper tang—the stench of life long decayed. His hand brushed the ground, closing around the silver necklace—its cord frayed, the pendant engraved with "Valefor." Kael Iscariot.

Memories struck like a dagger. Saigon, 2050. Thiên Long Tower. Project Asvaria. Kael's betrayal. The supercomputer's prophecy from Vesper Atrius. He clutched the necklace until his knuckles blanched. "What have you done to me?" he rasped, voice raw. "Where am I?"

He staggered upright, legs trembling as he lurched from the cave. A wan, ash-gray light seeped from a leaden sky, unveiling a dead forest—barren trees clawing upward like skeletal pleas for mercy. Far off, a pitch-black tempest roiled, lightning slashing the heavens. No hovercars, no holograms—just dust and desolation. Crude wooden scraps and stone axes littered the cave's edge, as if this place were snared in a feudal past, decades shy of World War I. This wasn't Saigon—it was a primal, untamed realm where his modern expertise might reshape everything.

"Noctavaria Abyss," he murmured, recalling the name from the prophecy he'd never witnessed fulfilled. "Asvaria." Atrius's voice echoed in his skull: "You are the ember of ruin…" He stared at the necklace, eyes like frost. "If this is your game, Atrius, I'll dismantle it. And Kael—you'll pay."

A faint rasp sounded from the forest—like claws scraping stone. Raizen spun, gripping the necklace, heart hammering. A primitive world, a veiled prophecy, and an unseen menace—it had only just begun.